Then Why Would You Kiss Him?
by Swa-Sa Masou
Summary: Rory fessing up to the kiss with Jess while Logan is in the hospital. One Shot


_A/N: Set after Logan wakes up in the hospital._

It had been another few hours. Rory was sitting in a chair in the room booked for Logan after his sister had visited. It was much nicer than the one he was initially transferred to after leaving the ICU. Her seat was overstuffed and gave the illusion that everything was fine and safe even as you sat in the hospital, possibly watching your loved one deteriorate.

Thankfully, that was not what was happening to Rory right now. Logan was actually making very good recovery time and he might even be able to leave in a few days, according to the most recent update. She was optimistic.

Still, the weight of things left unsaid hung heavily between them whenever he was awake. He may not have known it, in fact he likely didn't know it, but it was almost easier for Rory when he was asleep. She figured she would have to tell him at some point. Somehow, some way, things always got out. She had tried to rationalize with herself that things only got out in Star Hollow. A place where everyone knew _everyone_ and word traveled fast. It would be ridiculous to think that word would travel from a small publishing firm in Philly to New York, or even to Yale.

Just as crazy as it was to think that Logan would pull up in his car just as she and Jess were about to go for dinner to catch up. Just as crazy as Honor's bridesmaids not having enough of a brain to realize that they shouldn't talk about sleeping with Logan in front of his girlfriend. She was weighing her options and realized that it would be much better for this conversation to happen between the two of them than for Logan to happen to find out on his own.

As she stood up to stretch a kink out of her neck from leaning over her laptop for so long, Logan began to stir. He looked over at her and smiled. When he did that, it was like the entire night sky was shining its lights directly on her. She wasn't blinded enough by his looks, charm, and humor to think he was the sun. But the stars? The expanse of darkness that shone just enough to lead weary travelers home? Yes, that was Logan.

Dean had been all sun, all the time, with radiating happiness and simplicity, but intense enough to burn especially without proper precaution. Jess had been the darkness of a stormy night with flashes of lightning which illuminated the entire landscape, but also revealed more gathering complexities and inexactitudes for the future than she had been able to handle. Logan was the broad expanse of twinkling stars that could lend their light and hope to those on open waters, but just as easily dash unsuspecting seafarers against the rocks. Luckily, Rory was becoming quite the sailor.

Scooching the chair closer so that she could lean in and hold his hand without putting pressure on him, Rory offered a smile back. "Hey you, you're awake."

Chuckling softly, Logan responded, "How very astute, you must be a top-notch reporter with observational skills like that, Ace. But you know what I'm missing?" At Rory's inquisitive intonation, he continued, "A kiss from my doting girlfriend. Think you could go find her for me?"

Laughing, but also leaning up from her perch, Rory gave him a quick peck on the lips. "Oh, come on, Ace. Is that all you've got for me? I've been sitting her for days. Keep holding out on me and I'll start to think that you're getting it somewhere else."

Though clearly a joke in the same vein as his previous jape about finding his girlfriend, this one hit a little too close to Rory's line of thought as he had been asleep. Her face fell, just for a second, but he caught it. Locking eyes again, Rory took a deep breath, but didn't speak. "Rory?" His laugh was still evident in his voice, as though he was expecting Rory to pull out a punch line, but there was an actual question in his eyes.

Running her hands over her hair, as if to smooth down a non-existent lock out of place, Rory again took a deep breath. "Actually, there is something I need to talk to you about."

Settling back against his pillows, Logan's face started to darken. "Is this where you tell me that this has all been out of pity?" His voice rose, "Look, I know we weren't in a good place when I left and you didn't want me to go for exactly this reason, but Rory, come on."

It was so much harder hearing him say this. He still thought this was about what he had done. The truth was that she had forgiven him the moment she leaned in toward Jess. Before that really, she just hadn't realized it. She had been expecting to feel a rush from kissing her former love and a sense of satisfaction at getting back at Logan, but all she felt was guilt.

"It's not about what you did, Logan." Her voice started to break and she swallowed down the emotion, composing herself. "It's about what I did while you were gone."

Trying to pull himself up and failing, Logan adopted a dismissive tone, "And what was that, Rory? Did you talk to your mom about how upset you were with me? Did you get drunk at Lane's wedding and dance with someone? Did you-"

She cut him off. He saw her as so much better than him, he was going to keep suggesting inane things because her cheating on him would never cross his mind. "I kissed Jess."

The silence rang out between them. When he didn't say anything for several beats, Rory spoke again, "He was the guy who-"

It was Logan's turn to cut her off, his expression equal parts hurt and angry, "I know who he is, Rory." She wouldn't have needed the attached heart monitor to sense his reaction, but his anger was evident on the screen. "And if I could physically get out of this bed, I'd go beat the crap out of him."

Reaching for Logan's hand, she was hurt, but unsurprised when he pulled it out of her reach. "You can't, Logan. And not just because you can't leave the bed, but because I approached him. He was having an event at that publishing company he works with and I went to listen and at the end he and I were talking. He asked if everything was fixed. When I said yeah, he figured that meant you and I were broken up. Jess and I leaned in at the same time. It wasn't his fault."

Her eyes had drawn involuntarily down during her story, but as she looked up to see Logan's face, she was greeted with a sight she wasn't sure she would ever see. She had seen Logan in almost every mood: angry beyond words at his family, comforting to her, the happy-go-lucky playboy that most people saw, intense, lusting, in deep concentration, confident- but never true sadness. These tears he was clearly trying so hard to hold back were completely new territory to her.

He sniffled. The sound seemed to break away parts of her heart that sank to her stomach to turn it into a churning mass of nerves and ache. "So all those times when you thought you couldn't trust me around all of those girls and yet you…" he trailed off before starting again. "If you want to go then just go. You didn't have to tell me all of this." He began to broadcast anger as his dominant emotion once again, "You didn't even need to show up here, Rory, I would have figured it out when you didn't show up here!" Suddenly his voice shrank to a whisper again, "If you don't want to be here then just don't."

Failing at concealing her own tears, Rory leaned over the bed, trying to force eye contact. "Logan, I don't want to leave. I want to be here with you. I love you!"

"Then why would you kiss him?" His voice echoed around the room.

She wanted to say that she didn't know. She wanted to be meek and apologetic. Previously in her life, she would have been. But that wasn't who she had grown to be with Logan. He had helped her find her voice, he had been the spark to reignite her passions and had thrown her mercilessly into the driver's seat of her own life, a place she felt she had been far too seldom with any of her previous beaux, her mother, or her grandparents. So she answered confidently, "Because I wanted to know what it felt like to be you. To just act on what I wanted and to not feel remorse, consequences be damned. But that's not how I felt. None of it felt good and all I wanted to do was to see you. Then you were here and I was terrified that I would never get to be on good terms with you. We were fighting when you left and I hadn't forgiven you yet when you really didn't do anything wrong. I was stupid. I acted stupidly and all I can do now is ask that you forgive me."

Logan scoffed. He couldn't even meet her eyes. "And you think that's it? You say 'forgive me' and it's just done? That's not how this works, Rory!" She attempted to say something more than once, but the tears she was fighting were strangling out her words. After several moments of silence, Logan decided to break it. "I think you should leave."

Considering which protests to give voice to, Rory took in his appearance. It was as if his entire body was sheltering his heart from her: shoulders hunched, refusing to meet her gaze, hospital blanket pulled up high. She realized nothing would come of further discussion tonight and murmured a soft, "goodnight, Logan. I do love you and I'm so, so sorry." As she turned and walked out the door.

* * *

"She kissed that guy, Colin. She kissed him! She wasn't drunk, he didn't come on to her. She. Kissed. Him." Colin was sitting in the chair that Rory had vacated the previous night. Logan had been bored and wanted someone to talk to. He sure as hell wasn't going to talk to Honor about this and between his two best friends, Colin was only slightly more reliable when it came to actual issues than Finn was. Really, he would prefer Robert. They weren't as close, but he was the most level-headed of all of Logan's friends. That one time when he had asked Rory out to Finn's party was enough to stir up more jealousy, however, and since this was already a delicate issue, he refrained from making that particular phone call.

Colin, to his credit, had come in looking neither hungover or drunk and did not currently have a drink in his hand. These were the only signs that he understood the gravity of the situation, though. He was sprawled on the chair with one leg thrown carelessly over one armrest with his back leaning against the other and his head resting atop it. "Listen, Logan, I really don't what help you expect me to be here. I don't do the relationship thing, as you well know. And, though Rory's really cool, you didn't do the relationship thing until her either. Now she's given you a reason to go back to how things used to be! You can bounce on out of this relationship on your terms, because it's her fault, and go back to having fun."

"Fun, right" The smile Logan was trying to plaster on his face didn't reach his eyes. It didn't even come close. All he could think was about how it felt for those weeks when he thought they were broken up and then all that time when he was trying to win her back. He was trying to go back to his old ways. He had been trying to forget about her.

No matter how many beautiful women he was wrapped around and no matter how much liquor he poured down his gullet, it didn't feel the same. He had realized that he could never go back to the way he was before. If he kept trying, it would be a shade of his former self. The only real fun he had now was with Rory. Even the Life and Death Brigade stunt that had landed him in his current situation had been muted because he knew that she was mad at him when he left.

As much as most would assume their friendship lacked depth, Colin did notice something was still off about Logan. He sat up and braced himself against his knees as if to signal "okay, now you have my attention" and his words echoed the body language, "Okay, I get it. You love this girl and you want to talk about it. I'm all ears."

As men often do, Logan chose to address the ceiling instead of meeting the eyes of his watching friend. "Thank you. Man, I just don't know what to do." He let his gesturing hands drop to the bed in frustration. " We've had all of this time together that's been so great but each time she saw me with another girl, even though it was always completely innocent, her jealousy-meter would be off the freakin charts. Then I show up to her grandparents' house early one night and see her about to go to dinner with her ex-boyfriend and I'm just supposed to be okay with it? I mean, that's not how that works, right? Then she waltzes in here all full of concern, but really she's hiding that she kissed that same guy but one 'I'm sorry' is supposed to fix it? I mean, am I in the wrong here?"

Pursing his lips and bringing his tented fingers to them, Colin paused before responding. "Have I mentioned that I don't do relationships?" When Logan fixed him with a hard look, he backtracked, "I don't think you're in the wrong, but you did cheat on her too."

The volume of Logan's voice raised as he began to shout at his friend, "I thought we were broken up! Jeez, why is everyone so hung up on what I did when I really thought I was single? It wasn't even to celebrate that I was single, it was to try to get her out of my head. But even now when I'm so mad at her I can barely think straight, she's still in my head."

Colin had stood, "Look, I don't know what help you expect me to be here. It seems like you can either forgive her or you can't. I don't know how you think I'm going to help that."

Sighing, Logan's gaze swept past his friend and seemed to go someplace else entirely outside of the room, "I could forgive her if I thought I could trust her. If I could believe her when she says she loves me without picturing her kissing another guy."

Walking right up to Logan's bedside, Colin took a deep breath, "I don't know much about love, but I can tell you that she was concerned for you. When she got to the hospital and you were unconscious, she was freaking irate, man. The way that she yelled at us about how we were supposed to keep you safe? She cares. And then you know that your dad only came because she called and yelled at him, right? If she wanted that other guy, this would have been her perfect time to get out and she didn't take it."

With that, Colin picked up his jacket off the back of the chair and strode from the room.

* * *

Pacing outside the door, Rory re-read the text on her phone one more time. It was from Logan. He was asking her to come back to the hospital. She had left not 24 hours ago unsure when she would see Logan again. She had taken the train back to Yale and looked around the apartment. Should she start to pack up her stuff? She couldn't answer that. All she could do was sit and wonder.

So that's what she did. All night.

The next morning, she tried to distract herself with class and the paper, but nothing was working, so in the early afternoon she had gone back to the apartment that she was unsure if she could call hers anymore and fell asleep on the couch until she received the text from Logan asking if she could come back to the hospital.

Gathering all the courage she could, she pushed the door open and stepped inside. Logan quickly shut the book he had been reading and set it on the table. His smile was a relieved one. It wasn't bright and welcoming, but he was clearly happy that she had come.

Concentrating on each step that brought her closer to Logan, Rory tried to process how to start this conversation. A smile was good, right? And the fact that he had asked her to come was good too, right? "I was surprised when you messaged me. You were so angry yesterday."

"Ace, I wasn't angry yesterday. I was hurt. Still am, actually." Logan pulled himself into as much of a sitting position as possible and Rory fought down the urge to push him back against his pillows. She wasn't sure if that was her job. "I mean, all of those times when I had to reassure you that whatever girl you saw me with was innocent and yet when I leave, you end up being the one who kisses someone else." He shook his head. Looking back up at her, he continued in the same quiet, even voice, "I know, you're sorry. I get it. I'm sorry I ever slept with any of those girls too. It still doesn't make it right. The difference is, I was trying to forget you and you were trying to get back at me. This is a trust thing. How do I know that I can trust you when you get mad at me?"

Interrupting him, Rory rushed toward the bed as her words rushed from her mouth, "You can, Logan, I promise you. What happened, I feel terrible and nothing like that will ever happen again. Please, Logan please."

He could see the tears shining in her eyes as he prepared to say what he'd been framing in his mind since Colin left the room. "The way I see it, I have two choices: I can either trust you that it won't happen again and we can move on, or I can decide that I can't trust you and go back to trying to get over you. I don't want to do that. I tried to get over you. I did all the things I thought I enjoyed doing, but none of it was enjoyable because you weren't there."

Instead of tears, hope now shone in Rory's eyes as Logan held out a hand to her. "So I guess I really only have one option." His smile told her that she was welcome next to him. "Get over here, Ace. I don't want to do this life without you. I love you." She accepted his outstretched hand and, careful of his injuries, fell in next to him on the narrow bed. She snuggled into his side as she felt a comforting kiss on the top of her head.

Tilting her head up to meet his lips, Logan heard his favorite sound in the world: Rory Gilmore saying, "I love you too."


End file.
